Denise Fulton

Gaming has come a long way since the days of Pong and Asteroids. At the vanguard of the latest wave of interactive, multiplayer video games is this native of Bowling Green, Ohio, one of the few women in the industry to crack the ranks of upper management. As the studio head of the Austin office of Midway Games (the company that brought Space Invaders to the U.S. in 1978), Fulton oversees a staff of 180 programmers, designers, writers, and artists. She began her career on the West Coast as a graphic designer at Microsoft, then worked her way up to senior development director at Electronic Arts, where she oversaw its enormously popular NHL series. She moved to Austin in 2002 to work at the now-defunct Ion Storm, where she produced the sequel to the cult hit Deus Ex, and joined Midway two years later.

What’s the biggest difference between the video games that you’re producing and the ones you played as a kid?

The production values have gone up so dramatically. Today’s games have much more in common with TV and cinema, and you’re going to see more and more blurring of those lines as we go forward. Graphically, of course, there’s a big effort to make things more realistic and immersive, to make you feel like you’re actually in the environment.

Besides better production values, how are games more sophisticated than they used to be?

Well, take Grand Theft Auto. What made that game exciting wasn’t the violence but all the choices that players had to pick from. It wasn’t as linear and scripted as the games that came before it. You were dropped into a very interesting environment and then you had to choose your path through it. Players really responded to that. But it’s funny—on one end of the spectrum, more and more players want to author their own experiences, and on the other end of the spectrum, they want stronger characters and more-robust, cinematic storytelling. Those two things can be at odds with each other, but designers are starting to meld them in interesting ways.

How is the evolving technology changing video games?

With Xbox Live, PlayStation 3, and the Wii, we have the capability to connect players with other players so they can interact with each other, and that’s a whole other realm. Playing video games